NIL RECURRING

In the last third of 2007, Porcupine Tree released "Neil Recurring", an EP that could well have been included as a bonus album on the excellent "Fear of a Blank Planet", released less than half a year earlier. Far from being a collection of discards or extended sessions, "Neil Recurring", while maintaining the hardships of the tormented teenager "Robby" as its thematic axis, takes on a life of its own with four very good pieces that in several passages come very close to the hardened sound of progressive metal, combined with some reflective brushstrokes of melancholic sadness.

The spacey "Nil Recurring" kicks off the EP with the collaboration of Robert Fripp and his guitars, and imposing his personal stamp on the song with undisguised similarities to the experimental dalliances so typical of King Crimson, continues with the painful "Normal", a rearranged and more complete version of "Sentimental", follows with the powerful "Cheating The Polygraph" and Harrison's mastery of percussion and Colin Edwin's bass to support Wilson's infectious solos and guitar riffs and Richard Barbieri's intriguing electronic sounds, and concludes with the full band in a state of electronic hypnosis that becomes dramatic as the unfolding of "What Happens Now? "grows in intensity and yields its final stretch to a suffocating, schizoid guitar solo from Wilson, suggesting a desperate and fatal denouement.

"Nil Recurring" is a soaring EP, complementing "Fear of a Blank Planet", and is probably one of the band's best in that format.

Very good.

4 stars